The present invention relates to generally an automatic sewing machine of the type mainly for sewing the sheet materials with their side edges aligned, and more particularly a device for automatically aligning the side edges of the soft sheet materials such as fabric during the sewing or stitching.
With automatic sewing machines, it is, in general, difficult to automatically feed the sheet materials to be joined through the machine wth a predetermined margin to sew up while correctly aligning their side edges. This will become more difficult especially when the soft upper and lower sheet materials of various patterns are stitched together wth their edges aligned by the high-speed industrial sewing machine. Therefore, the operator must manually align the side edges of the sheet materials to be joined as they are fed toward the needle. The result is the inevitable intermittent sewing operation. Thus even the conventional automatic industrial sewing machines require much time and labor. There have been of course devised and demonstrated various types of automatic industrial sewing machines especially designed for accomplishing special works such as attaching collars, cuffs, and so on which, in general, have special patterns. Therefore these machines are not adapted for universal uses or purposes.